While the Apple faithful wait for next week’s World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC), Google-holics gathered at the Moscone Center in San Francisco this past Thursday for the annual “Google I/O,” to get the latest news from their side of the fence.

When DTS first announced its DTS:X format suite at CES, the details were a bit scarce. An "unveiling" at DTS's headquarters last week makes it a bit easier to plan for home theater systems that are designed to accommodate object-based and immersive audio for not just Dolby Atmos and Auro3D, but now for DTS:X as well.

For the Apple event held in San Francisco on March 9, I pay particular attention to the things that some might call minor or not even report on, that have important significance for the custom installation world.

Regardless of what your prognostication is for the long-term future of physical media as a program playback source, there is no question that streaming services and IP-delivered content are multiplying daily as a key method by which consumers, your prospects, clients, and customers access entertainment and informational content.

If you thought Aereo, the technology that sent local TV station content to the cloud for viewing by paying customers around the world, was an idea that was too good to be true, the Supreme Court of the United States agrees with you.

Watching the keynote address for the Google I/O developer’s conference yesterday, I couldn’t help but think of the line in the old Broadway show tune, Annie Get Your Gun: “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better,” in the way Google, Apple, and Microsoft have presented their versions of our technology future.

While the emphasis at E3 this year was on games, games, and more games, there is an increasing trend toward accessing those games via streaming services, recording them, and uploading them via Twitch or other means, and for intra-game play within the home.

As long rumored, Amazon has finally joined the ranks of companies offering small, relatively inexpensive devices that add streaming services and games to any display device with a spare HDMI input and within range of a Wi-Fi or wired broadband connection. Priced at $99, Amazon’s Fire TV will go head to head at the top of the STB fray with the similarly priced AppleTV and Roku 3 (4200X).

Sometimes the irony of life is too delicious for words, but since words
are our business here we will put them to use for the latest comical
sideshow in the epic battle between Time Warner Cable (TWC) and CBS that
has resulted in both CBS owned and operated TV stations as well as
Showtime and other CBS-owned cable channels being taken off the TWC
cable systems in New York, Los Angeles, D...